We report on a concerted effort aimed at understanding the origin and history of the pre-solar nanodiamonds in meteorites including the astrophysical sources of the observed isotopic abundance signatures. This includes measurement of light elements by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), analysis of additional heavy trace elements by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and dynamic calculations of r-process nucleosynthesis with updated nuclear properties. Results obtained indicate that: (i) there is no evidence for the former presence of now-extinct 26Al and 44Ti in our diamond samples other than what can be attributed to silicon carbide and other ‘impurities’, and this does not offer support for a supernova (SN) origin but neither does it negate it; (ii) analysis by AMS of platinum in ‘bulk diamond’ yields an overabundance of r-only 198Pt that at face value seems more consistent with the neutron burst than with the separation model for the origin of heavy trace elements in the diamonds, although this conclusion is not firm given analytical uncertainties; (iii) if the Xe–H pattern was established by an unadulterated r-process, it must have been a strong variant of the main r-process, which possibly could also account for the new observations in platinum.